Your team already knows the people in your niche
A desk that has worked one niche for a few years is connected to a good share of the people in it: the engineering managers who hire, the senior people who move, the ones who always know who is looking. That knowledge is spread across every recruiter's LinkedIn account, and nobody can see it all at once. So the shortlist goes out cold, while a colleague two desks away has been connected to the hiring manager since their last job.
This play puts the team's connections in one place and finds the warmest path to the people you want to reach.
Two ways to use it
Add it to the plays you already run. Every sourcing or BD play that ends in LinkedIn profiles can finish with a network check. Run a job spec shortlist or map every hiring manager at an account, then check the result against the team network. The warm names go through a colleague, the rest go into the sequence.
Start from the network itself. Give it the criteria instead of a list: the job titles you place, the companies you sell into, the keywords in your niche. It finds everyone your team is already connected to who fits, confirms their current role and fills in contact details. For sourcing, that is a pool of candidates a colleague can vouch for. For BD, it is a list of hiring managers who already know someone on your desk.
What you get back
A table of matches grouped by teammate: the person, their confirmed current company and role, which of your colleagues know them, contact details where you asked for them, and a drafted intro or referral ask for that colleague to send. Separately, the people nobody on the team knows, ready for your usual outreach. Nothing is sent.
Variations worth knowing
Referrals into a hard role. Find the senior people in the discipline your team is connected to, and ask who they rate. For people you have placed, the placed-candidate referral play is the warmer version.
Skip the contact lookup for intros. When the teammate is making the introduction, they already have a way to reach the person. Leave out contact details and the run costs only the role check and the drafts.
Where this goes wrong
Nobody has uploaded. The search can only see connections that were uploaded. A result that covers zero teammates is not "nobody knows anyone there". Get the team to upload first.
Trusting the export's job titles. People move. The role check is in the play for that reason, so leave it on.
Asking the wrong teammate. Two colleagues connected to one person does not mean both know them well. The draft goes to whoever you pick, and a quick word with them first saves an awkward ask.
Asking a client's staff to refer their colleagues. Same rule as any referral: ask who they rated elsewhere, never who you could take from your own client.
